The Montreal Canadiens welcome the Calgary Flames to the Bell Centre. It is the Habs 16th game of the season and they remain in the middle of the pack in their division.
The Flames are a fairly desperate team as they got off to a rough start and all anyone can talk about is how many defensemen they are going to trade away this season and where they will end up.
Here are 24 Thoughts on the Canadiens game vs the Calgary Flames.
First Period Thoughts
The game starts with a ceremony for Pierre Turgeon as he is added to the Canadiens Ring of Honor after being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Congratulations to Pierre!
Although, this just makes me wonder how good the Canadiens could have been in the late 1990’s if they just didn’t trade away all their good players. Imagine if they just kept Turgeon, Vincent Damphousse, John LeClair, Eric Desjardins and, oh yeah, Patrick Roy.
Sam Montembeault gets the start but I though this was the perfect game for Cayden Primeau. He looked great in his last start and the Flames are one of the worst offensive teams in the league. Would have been a sensible spot for the youngster after Allen and Montembeault split the two games on the weekend.
No one will be shocked by this but Cole Caufield has a really good shot. I know he hasn’t scored a ton at even strength this season, but I was certain he just had the puck on his backhand and then he fired a laser of a forehand wrist shot that hit Jacon Markstrom in the mask. That’s an NHL goalie that had literally no idea where that puck came from. He probably thought a crow got in the rink and ran into his helmet because it made zero sense that a shot came from that angle and that hard based on where Caufield was positioned.
Jesse Ylonen did not enjoy being a healthy scratch and obviously never wants to go back there. He just had a shift where he led the play on a two on one break because of his speed, though it was stymied by the defenders. Then he came flying back on the back check and dropped a Flames player with a heavy hit at open ice that caused a turnover. He then quickly fired a laser of a pass up to Rafael Harvey-Pinard who nearly split the defense as he received the pass to create a scoring chance. Great two-way shift from Ylonen who has some jump early on and looks good with RHP and Jake Evans.
Juraj Slafkvosky jumps into the rush, drops his shoulder and heads for the net before popping a pass across to Caufield who gets a great scoring chance. I think we will be seeing an awful lot of that in Montreal for a very long time.
Fourth line finishes the period with a flurry of chances. RHP-Evans-Ylonen has a little bit of everything and provide the Habs with incredible depth as they can all defend well and have the ability to add a bit of offense when they get the opportunity. That is a solid fourth line.
Good to see a balanced attack in that period, though it led to zero goals. Caufield led the forwards in ice time with 6:12 and Ylonen played the least at 3:05. Everyone on pace for 9:15 – 18:36 in this game with most players pretty tight in the middle. Saw scoring chances from every line as well as Josh Anderson nearly scored, Brendan Gallagher somehow missed a tap-in on a cross ice pass, Slafkovsky set up Caufield for a great chance and the fourth line was buzzing as well.